


Kinder: Where Clouds Fade Into Snow

by erasvita



Category: Those Who Went Missing
Genre: Gen, TWWM, esk, kinder leaves the shrine untouched, mountain biome event, where clouds fade into snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 19:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17925206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erasvita/pseuds/erasvita
Summary: Chapter 1:What Dwells Beneath the CanopyChapter 2 prompt





	Kinder: Where Clouds Fade Into Snow

As the last of the birds disappeared into the jungle sky, the esk and her bonded began their next climb. All around them the jungle had begun to wither, the behemoth tree at the end of their path blackening and curling in upon itself. It shuddered against the wind, dried leaves scattering upon the forest floor. Its limbs, once mighty and strong, now bowed beneath their own weight.

A single line of sap trickled slowly down its trunk; the last tear it would shed.

Somewhere off in the distance a jungle bird cried, its peal sad and lonely, and the tree seemed to shake in response. Then all was still and silent. 

“Come!”

His growl reverberated in her mind, prompting her to turn after him. The wolf was a shadow in the jungle, slipping through the trees with hardly a sound. He moved so silently, disappearing from view only to reappear seemingly farther up ahead, his dark frame gradually growing smaller and more distant.

“Wait up!” Kinder called, but if he heard her he showed no sign of slowing. She felt oddly detached, as if observing from a dream, as the wolf continued to run up the mountainous path. An icy grip closed around the esk’s heart, a feeling akin to fear; she would not be left alone here, not after what she had done.

The shrine now forgotten, Kinder followed the wolf. 

The trees around her thinned, the ground sloping sharply upwards as she ran. The wolf was still a silhouette up ahead, framed by the sky above and the mountain horizon below, always just out of reach. It seemed no matter how fast the esk ran, she couldn’t catch up; it was all she could do just to keep him within her line of sight. She strained against the climb, her footsteps beating a rhythm into the earth. Leaves stirred in her wake, kicked into motion by the speed of her passing. 

But she wasn’t fast enough; the wolf grew smaller, a black speck that continued to evade her. Try as she might, she couldn’t reach him. 

“Don’t leave me-” Her limbs felt thick and heavy, as if she were running in slow motion. Her vision began to waver; all of a sudden, Kinder was painfully aware of how hot it had become, and how humid. The heat was suffocating her, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, could hardly even move…

All around her the world began to fade and grow dim, darkness creeping in from every direction. She struggles to go on, her speed slowing from a run to a trot to a walk, and finally the exhaustion takes over -

\- Until a cold wind jerks her awake.

She stumbles forward, hindered by the deep snow. The world around her as been changed in the blink of an eye: gone is the overrun jungle, with its sprawling trees and sweeping vines. It’s been replaced by a world seemingly devoid of life, frigid and barren. Moments before the air had been heavy with humidity, alive with the sounds of chirping and buzzing insects. 

Now, the only thing Kinder could hear was the wind. It howls mercilessly at her, reaching out with cold hands that push her back to the ground. Her balance slips, and for a second she’s falling - 

“I’ve got you.” The voice is a growl, and the wolf is at her side. Just as Kinder loses her footing, he’s there helping her get it back, a pillar of support in this foreign world. Together they withstand the violent gusts of wind that push and pull at them from every direction, throwing their heads back as one in defiance. Because somehow they already know that when they stand together, they cannot fall.

“Where are we?” Kinder asks the wolf, trying to make out their surroundings. Ahead of them a wall of snow seems to loom, impossibly tall. 

“A new mountain,” he growls in response, ears falling flat against his skull. “A new test.”

The esk’s heart seems to stutter in response, and then the feeling from the jungle is back. Just as before, she can’t explain the feeling nor stop to question it: it calls to her without words, directs her by faith rather than by sight. It seems a part of her, as if her soul is ringing in response to the strange and foreign call, and she knows that even had she wanted to ignore it, it would be impossible.

Kinder looks at the wolf again, and he laughs: a coughing, growling sound that lifts the hair on her spine. “Let’s go!” he says; and they go.

The snow is blinding, and the wind seems to be pushing back against them - but the esk and the wolf push through. Up they go, the ground rising steeply beneath their feet. With every step that they take, the wind seems more convinced to hold them back: it howls fiercely, pelleting them with sleet and ice and snow, clawing at them with fingers of cold. Every so often one or the other slips, and the wind seems to howl with delight. But Kinder and the wolf shake off its grip and drop their heads low: the stronger the wind pulls, the more determined they are to prevail. 

This mountain is steeper than the last, and the journey is longer. Exhaustion starts to set in, hastened by the cold. Both of them are wet, and tired, and the mountain is taking its toll on them. Without speaking a word but understanding all the same, they slow their frenzied pace more and more until they are at a walk - and even that is a struggle. The clouds seem to sense their weakness, surrounding them: everywhere the esk and the wolf look is white. The ground is white; behind and before them is white; above and below them is white. The trail continues without an end in sight, each inch feeling like a mile to traverse.

But eventually, the ground begins to level out into something almost-flat. As Kinder crests the last cliff at last, the clouds seem to suddenly lift, and the wind finally relents.

The world drops sharply away in all directions, a brilliant view of brushstroke-peaks stretching as far as the eye can see. The clouds hang low around them, so that the mountains seemed wreathed in fog with only their heads poking through. On the top of the mountain they’ve climbed, a grove of sparsely-placed trees decorate the bluff.

Thoroughly spent, Kinder sprawls herself across the ground beneath a stray pine. Its trunk is bowed, and its branches barren of any nettles, but the esk doesn’t mind.

The wolf, however, seems restless. He paces back and forth, a low growl emanating from his throat. “What’s wrong?” Kinder asks; but he doesn’t answer.

As Kinder watches him, the tugging in her chest begins to grow stronger. Its ringing in her ears, making it hard to think. The wolf seems to hear it, too: he whines and scratches at his ears, shaking his head as if trying to block out the noise. It grows in pitch, louder, louder, and soon they can’t take it anymore. With a growl, Kinder leaps to her feet. 

The tug tightens, like a rope drawing her forward, and she is powerless to stop it. Only when she finds herself before yet another shrine tucked into the hollow of a tree does the feeling finally cease, as if this is where it meant to bring her all this time. 

The shrine seems to know what she did on the last mountain, for it cowers before her, its energy weak and fearful. Yet again, it is fashioned into the shape of a man; only this time, he is not kneeling as if in offering, but as if in submission, pleading for mercy. All around him and the tree he is nestled into is a circle of fallen pine needles, as if they have gathered around as witnesses. And scattered amongst the nettles are the pieces of his token, splintered into fragments as slender as the twigs.

A twinge of sadness stirs inside Kinder’s heart, and she is at a loss.

“You could destroy it again,” the wolf suggests, his blue eyes piercing when he turns back to look at her. But there’s something in his tone that suggests otherwise. 

“Or?” she prompts, sitting down before the shrine. The wolf comes to sit beside her. “Or you could not,” he says simply.

She contemplates his words. The longer she waits, the more pine needles begin to fall from the tree. They float by her face, arranging themselves seemingly perfectly into the waiting circle. The tree creaks in the wind; otherwise everything is silent.

Kinder backs away.

The shrine is already dead, or soon will be. This one is beyond saving, but it would be equally pointless to destroy it. The wolf nods at her and retreats in kind, as if content with her decision. The tree seems to shudder, and the last of its pine nettles drifts slowly to the ground, completing the circle. The world is still - impossibly slow - as Kinder and the wolf turn away.

“What do you feel?” he implores her again, as he did at the last shrine. This time, Kinder has an answer.

“I feel at ease,” she tells him. “This place has never been truly alive.” Perhaps it was the frigity of the mountain, the lack of life she had seen that made her think so; or maybe it was the way the statue had been bent over, as if pleading for an end to whatever suffering he had endured.

The grove of trees had their own story, and Kinder was not a part of it.

The wolf growls in response, settling into pace beside her. As the pair tread away from the shrine, the discarded needles and frozen snow seem especially sharp underfoot, sunlight glinting off every edge and every corner. The grove of trees seem to whisper at their backs, rubbing their branches together as if exchanging gossip amongst themselves. But Kinder ignores them all, choosing to focus instead on whatever would come next.

She doesn’t see the way the statue man begins to crumble into dust, starting with his hands.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Final word count: 1710**  
>  **AP Breakdown**  
>  Base Score: 34 AP (Writing: 1710 words)  
> +2 AP (Large Familiar / Swarm: 2 AP * 1)  
> +10 AP (Other Esk Bonus: 10 AP * 1)  
> +16 AP (Storyteller Bonus: 8 AP * 2)  
> +25 AP (Event Bonus) (+15 shattered peaks, +5 biome, +5 wordcount challenge)  
>  _Total AP per submission: 87_
> 
> **GP Breakdown**  
>  Base Score: 17 GP (Writing: 1710 words)  
> +2 GP (Large Familiar / Swarm: 2 GP * 1)  
> +12 GP (Storyteller Bonus: 6 GP * 2)  
> +12 GP (Event Bonus) (+8 shattered peaks, +2 biome, +2 wordcount challenge)  
>  _Total GP per submission: 43_
> 
>  
> 
> Commissioned by [Remaryn](https://remaryn.wixsite.com/twwm)


End file.
